Part 4: Texas to Southern Illinois

20210704-09

The Trip

The photos below are what we saw.

The park was clean and the grounds were nicely groomed.  The bath house was on 15 foot-high pilings as the Black River regularly floods leaving the entire area underwater.

The Black River looks placid, but the flow was much faster than we expected.

From our camp on the Black River, we continued northeast and finally approached the Mississippi River bridge.  Our destination for the day was our friend's farm near Carbondale, IL.

We arrived at Mark and Gail's farm and were immediately put to work driving his Unimog as they were "haying" (gathering hay).

We drove the equipment to a neighboring farm where some contract labor had cut the hay and raked it into rows.  A baler was then used to transform the rows into rolled bales.

Mark used his tractor with hay spikes front a rear to retrieve the rolled bales and bring them to the trailer.

The baler is driven by the PTO on the tractor.  The unit is driven over the rows of hay and the baler sucks it into a large roll then wraps it with nylon rope and dumps it out the rear of the baler.

Since the hay still has lots of moisture in it, the bales are very heavy and a tractor is required to lift the bales onto the trailer for transport.

The trailer will be fully loaded and stacked several bales high.

The trailer is approaching capacity: one more bale to go.

The final bales were brought to the trailer.

I spotted a huge horse fly on one of the bales.  This fellow is easily a full-inch long and serve up painful bites that remove plugs of tissue.

We drove the trucks and trailers back to Mark's farm and started unloading the bales and storing them in the barns.  One of Mark's "track steer" tractors is equipped with hay spikes so it was used to remove the bales.  These are capable tractors that can operate on soft ground and in tight quarters.

The Unimog was used to haul the 4x4 tractor back to the farm.

The bales were stored in an inside shed and the overflow was stored in a (kinda) rain protected area.

While I was taking photos of the hay storage I noticed something moving at my feet.  Not very big, but quite well camouflaged.

All of the 'mogs were parked near the kennels.  His U500/GXV camper was hooked to the stock trailer.

Later, we went to give the cattle a treat.  The cattle literally came running at the sound of the ATV.  They know who butters their bread!



Mark contracted some loggers to clear one of his fields and they brought in some large equipment to get the job done.  Above is a log loader.



This monster is a tree cutter based on a track-hoe platform.  The fingers on the hand grab the tree while the blade on the bottom cuts it from the stump.



The cutting wheel has large carbide teeth.



This was a large skidder that had a dozer blade, grapple and winch.  The ultimate off-road vehicle.



Note the size of the grapple used to grasp downed trees and "skid" them to the processing area.



Next, it was off to the kennel to check on the foxhounds.



Later in the day, the hunt mistress came and took the hounds for a walk to help build pack unity.

Photos and Text Copyright Bill Caid 2021, all rights reserved.
For your enjoyment only, not for commercial use.